Rex B. Hamilton looks forward to meeting you at the Great Lakes Fright Fest –
05-27-2009

Rex B. Hamilton looks forward to meeting you at the Great Lakes Fright Fest

May 27, 2009

Greetings, Fellow Haunters:

The Great Lakes Fright Fest (GLFF) cranks up in less than 48 hours. The show runs from Friday the 29th through Sunday the 31st, in Petersburg, Michigan. The Fright Fest is celebrating its 9th year in a row of providing haunt classes, all-day activities for your children, three meals a day, a big pot-luck Saturday dinner, one of the largest door-prize giveaways you’ve ever seen and a real, working haunted house on Saturday night.

At their Web site you can register to attend (it’s free), obtain a map, see photos of what went on in years past (for some unknown reason my 2008 GLFF photographs aren’t there yet), volunteer to bring food items, sign up to decorate and run a scene in the haunted house (you had better hurry the heck up right now!), get hotel/motel/camping/seminar/meal information and much more.

The big day is Saturday. Many people “make a day of it.” They arrive just before 8 AM, register, have breakfast, are greeted by producer Kkrazy Kkaren Taylor just after 9 AM and then dive right into the haunted seminars. Lunch is a picnic standard - burgers, hot dogs, and the trimmings. Then an afternoon of seminars, the Saturday evening pot luck dinner, a door prize giveaway that has few rivals, a grand “fog-off” for the kids and, after it gets dark, the haunted house opens for thrills and chills.

What do you pay? Admittance to the haunted house costs a can of food. Otherwise, you aren’t obligated to pay anything. But haunters, being who we are, understand that a convention like the GLFF runs on donations. Many of us pitch in so that all can have a good time.

I’ll bring a couple of cans of food for the “Haunters Against Hunger Food Drive.” (The admission to the haunted house is one canned food item.) For the door prize giveaway I’ll give away a 2008 Lord Zargon tour t-shirt. (There were only 20 made - they are hand-airbrushed so that no two are alike. If you wish, I’ll autograph it.) On the GLFF’s Web site I signed up to bring a gallon of milk for communal meals. And for the big potluck Saturday dinner I just finished whomping up a batch of my “Baked Ziti” earlier this evening. (It’s on a cooling rack downstairs in the kitchen as I write this. I can still smell the aroma as it wafts up the central staircase in my house.) If you like Italian pasta dishes, I need you to try a scoop of this one and let me know.

But the really crazy people (like yours truly) make a weekend of the GLFF. You should see the decorated camp sites replete with horrific props, set dressings, animatronics, loony signs and smiles all around. I haven’t told you about the monster pot of chili on Friday night, the big pancake breakfast on Sunday morning, the late-night campfire parties on Friday and Saturday, the horror movie marathon on Friday night, and how it’s quite acceptable to ignore all the activities, sit under a shade tree far away and watch the clouds go by. Or have I?

What I can tell you for certain is that the weather forecast is for mostly sunny skies and high temperatures in the low to mid-seventies at the Fright Fest.